Promoting entrepreneurship among Luxembourg teens

With Luxembourg’s business community calling for a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Grand Duchy, the US Embassy has taken the matter into its hands, offering a workshop and contest to a group of 20 secondary school students.

18.05.2014

16.5. Wi / CdP START-UP Entrepreneurship Contest for high school students / US Embassy Foto:Guy Jallay

16.5. Wi / CdP START-UP Entrepreneurship Contest for high school students / US Embassy Foto:Guy Jallay

(CS) With Luxembourg’s business community calling for a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Grand Duchy, the US Embassy has taken the matter into its hands, offering a workshop and contest to a group of 20 secondary school students.

Students from three “lycées” across Luxembourg signed up for the first Start-up! programme, which sees five winning students travel to the US for an entrepreneurship camp at Hillsdale College in Michigan, offered by the Free Entreprise Leadership Challenge.

US ambassador to Luxembourg Robert A Mandell explained that the idea for the workshop emerged during his tour of high schools in the Grand Duchy last year, where he noticed that “no one said that they wanted to start their own business and be their own boss.”

Partnering with BGL BNP Paribas’ Future Lab, Jonk Entrepreneuren Luxembourg and Silicon Luxembourg, the embassy reached out to schools across the Grand Duchy encouraging students to come up with a business idea.

At the one-week workshop, the teenagers were able to meet Luxembourg entrepreneurs, as well getting the opportunity to pick the brains of US businessman Rhett Power, whose toy company Wild Creations has been named a top 75 company by the US Chamber of Commerce.

Power is also an author, speaker and business coach, and said on Friday that he was amazed by the creativity and level of enthusiasm that the students showed.

Projects that students were working on after three days included a karaoke bar for Luxembourg, a cooking package delivery service, an internet and gaming café and a website with going out tips in the Grand Duchy, among others.

At the end of the workshop, students will present their business plan, including marketing, management and finance strategies to a jury, which will judge the projects by a set of 20 criteria. The winners will be chosen next week, with five students getting the opportunity to travel to Michigan in July.

Other prizes, such as internships are also up for grabs. Meanwhile, the embassy hopes that the workshop will continue in the future. “You have to start somewhere,” Mandell said, who brought his own experience as a real estate developer to the workshop. “You should try. If you don’t try, you’ll never succeed,” the ambassador advised the budding entrepreneurs.